My bet: Rick Santorum. After all, when you’re polling in the low single digits, you have nothing to lose. (Update: Find out tonight when our own Stephen Green drunkblogs the debate, beginning at 8:00 PM eastern.)

There are two other issues that Cain will be criticized for tonight. Of course, 9-9-9 will come under scrutiny. Every single candidate stomped on it during the last debate and his answers were weak, yet his poll numbers did not drop. They would be wise to focus on his confusing non-answers on abortion, which caused John Stossel to become frustrated in an interview. Rick Santorum has released a video alleging that Cain is pro-choice. Most likely, the candidates will wait to see if the harassment allegations do their job for them, and they’ll restrain themselves from an all-out assault.

Mitt Romney’s strategy will be the same as it always has been. He will count on other candidates trashing each other, and offer polished rebuttals to the criticisms of him that he has grown accustomed to answering. He can be encouraged by some polls showing him at the top in Iowa, although others show him in third. It actually benefits him to not be ahead in Iowa so that the right-of-Romney competitors tear each other down.

Newt Gingrich continues to rise. Two polls have him statistically tied with Romney for second place in Iowa. We Ask America has him at 18%, only four behind Cain and three ahead of Romney. InsiderAdvantage has Herman Cain with a wide lead at 30%, Romney with 15% and Gingrich at 12%. In South Carolina, Gingrich is putting together the biggest operation of any candidate.

Nationally, Rasmussen finds Cain with 26%, Romney with 23% and Gingrich with 14%. Polls have shown Gingrich in third nationally for awhile now, but Jeffrey H. Anderson makes some important observations. Since October 12, Romney’s lead over Gingrich has decreased by 10 points. Support for Romney fell 6 points, Cain by 3, Bachmann by 2 and Perry and Santorum by 1 each. Only Gingrich and Ron Paul rose by 4 and 2 points respectively. This means that Gingrich is pulling support from Romney and is the one who benefits the most from attacks on him, and he may also be getting support from the right-of-Romney candidates as well.

Gingrich has no compelling reason to change his strategy. It’s clearly working for him, and he can sit and wait to see what happens to Cain’s campaign. If Cain’s numbers drop, Gingrich is well-placed to win his supporters. Gingrich should specifically call-out his opponents to one-on-one debates like he and Cain had on Saturday, making it difficult for them to say no.

Bachmann is at risk of sounding over-the-top and desperate. Without mentioning names, she recently said that some of her rivals are “frugal socialists.”

That’s not a bad way to characterize a politician who believes that a government can make law on any subject whatsoever — especially concerning matters of property and taxation — as long as revenues and expenditures balance. At any rate, it’s a good, pithy phrase with plenty of bite. I like it.

Nobody but a moron would mention Cain’s accusers. There is nothing but negatives for a Republican to do so. The MSM and blogosphere have kept this front and center for a week. Politico has done what, three hundred stories so far? Woodward and Bernstein wrote fewer words about Watergate, Steven King’s ‘The Stand’ is shorter and contains less fiction.

Yes please PJM let’s keep kicking this dead horse so that the Dems, libs, and MSM don’t have to be alone in smearing Republican candidates. It would be awful if Perry or Romney didn’t get the nomination.

And it would be so wonderful if Cain won the nomination. Just think: he has less experience in elective office than Obama had when he ran in 2008 and is much worse than Bill Clinton in the way he handles his womanizing. Not to mention that he is in remission after a serious cancer diagnosis. I am sure all the stress of running a campaign pock-marked by bimbo eruptions will not increase the ever-present risk that his cancer will return. Having a president slowly dying in office is just one of those things; it’s not as if the voters had any clue a head of time that something like this could happen. — Oh, wait …

Of course, since Cain has categorically denied anything occurred there is no proof of womanizing. Just the MSM and Politico’s fantasy-wish-fulfillment and people who have something to gain from Cain dropping out. Do I wish he had handled slimy smears, innuendo, and dirty tricks from his own party better? Absolutely. But what kind of honest man would expect mudslinging and dirt from both directions? What kind of teammate or supporter or person from your own party would drag a fellow party member through the gutter without any proof? What kind of person would do his enemy’s work for him?

Do I think Edward Kennedy’s long years of elected office would make him a good POTUS? Probably not. Same for Nancy Pelosi, Warren Magnussen, etc. The current President of Iran has won a few elections, does that make him more qualified than Cain?

Is PMmedia competing with Politico for most stories published about this scandal? Why are you empowering the liberal media to control elections with anonymous or unconfirmed accusations? Why are you allowing the media to stay at home with Edwards or Obama while lynching ours?

Even if you believe that he is a harasser, what benefit is there is scrutinizing the Cain campaign other than legitimizing Politico? Is it your duty to force us to choose a non-Cain candidate?

Your anger at PJM is misdirected by 180 degrees. You ought to be mad at Cain for making this a much worse crisis than it had to be if he is innocent. Or you ought to be really mad at him if he is guilty plus you ought to be mad at yourself for being taken in by a fraud. The allegations are out there and need to be covered in a fair manner by real objective journolists rather than the rabid lefties at Politico. The problem for you is that Cain is looking more and more guilty with every thing he says. I make no bones about being anti-Cain but even a supporter who can think for himself has to question Cain’s responses to this crisis.

Cain has said Nothing Happened. How does that look ‘more and more like he’s guilty? If you did nothing wrong you did nothing wrong. An honest man explains nothing because he has nothing to explain.

“Did you stop beating your wife?” type of questions are both underhanded and slimy. I hate to think that people at PJM are so enamored of their own choice that they would engage in mudslinging and innuendo but here it is.

Cain lied about the settlements, at first claiming (inconceivably) that he was unaware of the terms of the settlements and then, the same day, telling Greta that the settlements were 2 to 3 months wages when, in fact, they were a full year’s salary.

People are creatures of habit. Four allegations is three too many. Cain is damaging the Tea Party and the GOP. He should withdraw now.

Prove he lied. Don’t just say it. Prove it. Two of the four accusers have deep Democratic ties. One of them is a serial accuser. Four make a pattern? Four? Are you serious?

You get more weirdos crawling out of the woodwork confessing to crimes when the media runs this many stories. This is an obvious set up and the only ones pushing it are liberals and people who want another Republican nominee.

Molly, the oldest political imperative is you are not supposed to cheat on your wife and family if you are serious about winning an election. I’m sorry, but we cannot rewrite that dictum because someone on our side gets into trouble. Yes, Clinton got elected, but only because Perot ran and got 19%, otherwise he never would have won that election.

“‘I’m old fashioned, I don’t believe in sending someone to the White House who has cheated on his wife.’ You think you’re making fun of us, but we can see that you’re a little girl wetting her pants for giggling.

“Or, as I said in response to your comment #28 on Dr. Helen’s ‘Why was Sharon Bialek Fired’ post, you’re another white Democrat bigot. Go call somebody an oreo, Lefty.”

I have been with Cain nearly from the start, and I am concerned about recent events. Not about the claims themselves, which are probably close to sure BS. Rather, as has been noted elsewhere, how he handles crises is dicey. What was it, more than a week lead time and no coherent response drawn up? What if this was news Pres. Cain was getting that Red Chinese troops were wading ashore in Taiwan? I think we had this last time, about who is answering the hot line at 3 a.m. Sometimes you dont have time to call in you experts for consultation. I’m still on the Cain Train for now, but Newt is starting to look better these last few days.

Newt has looked good from the beginning. No one has his debating skills and no one has his ACTUAL political experience dealing with balancing the national budget. If it were not for the personal baggage from his 1st marriage he would be the hands down favorite to defeat Obama. Speaking of which, just about everyone I know has some history of marriage problems, and or divorce, by the time they reach the age of 60, I’d say it’s high time to forget and forgive Newt for anything that happened 20 odd years ago, we desperately need his courage and political wisdom in the White House now.

I don’t think any of these candidates will take the bait…If one comes close..it would be Michelle Bachmann…and her’s would be a benign comment about how she as a woman can identify with the issue in a way that is different than the men on the stage…just a point of separation….nothing more.

What will happen is that the “heartless Republican males” on that stage who fail to acknowledge the existance of the allegations against Cain will be offensive to MSNBC commentators, etc…they will be accused of ignoring the plight of the accusors and the victims of sexual harassment in general. They are dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t….Exactly where the Dems want them to be.

I don’t know who’ll take the bait, but what I find interesting is the statistical cluster of incidents surrounding Mr. Cain of what I’ve come to call the sudden sexual harassment syndrome, or the four S syndrome of self initiated activity, usually by enlightened liberal social welfare types. (See “Sudden Jihad Syndrome,” for example) Usually this syndrome occurs with females, but not always, often blond, and with a history of prior complaints of being victimized, usually by males. Usually this syndrome happens in formerly male dominated occupations that are still disproportionately male, for example the military and police. But this syndrome has been known to happen in the political arena too, where all is fair in love and war. So statistically speaking, sudden sexual harassment syndrome is not a manifestation of multiple black swans (no sexual pun intended).

Bill Kurtis, a nationally known award winning journalist from Chicago, went on a local Chicago talk radio show yesterday, Roe Conn’s, and explicitly said Bialek has a “history” and that many who have dealt with her are not surprised she would make these charges. He explicitly stated many who have worked with her could see the Cain-Bialek roles reversed.

He said more will come out about Bialek. I’ve had trouble finding this reported on PJM.

I wouldn’t be too concerned about the “2AM phone call” scenario. The whole idea is preposterous. Other than releasing nuke launch codes, the President really doesn’t have any opportunity to take short term action. In PsychoDad’s example, if China invades Taiwan, unless there are plans in place and orders written and materiel stockpiled in advance which provide for a U.S. response in the event of such an occurrence, it’s going to take quite some time to work out the logistics of any response – possibly quite a lot longer than a week. You can’t just put a carrier group together overnight and get it to where you want it. You have to pre-position assets strategically, with orders in hand as to how to respond to possible crises. Unless the President is going to say, “No, wait, don’t follow the plans that were developed for this type of crisis,” there’s really not a lot for him to do. Of course “no plan survives contact with the enemy”, but that’s why we have field commanders and the President, sitting in the Oval Office or wherever, should _definitely_ not be overruling troop commanders in the field in contact with the enemy. The chain of command works both ways.

Cain’s answers in this regard are consistently good and Constitutionally correct. The problem is that the rest of America has no clue what the President’s job is. The President’s job is to set foreign policy. For example the President can say, “The United States is a friend to Israel and counts Israel as an important ally in the Middle East.” The President’s job is _not_ to write orders off the cuff nor even to be involved in the planning process. As Cain says, that is what Generals and Admirals are for.

Separately, and not in specific response to any one other commenter, as for the allegations of sexual harassment, here’s what I think.

1) It is absolutely disgusting that a man can be accused of “harassment” more than a decade in the past, with absolutely zero evidence and, in several cases, only on hearsay (the accusers haven’t even identified themselves) and that anyone at all pays any attention. The time to accuse someone of a crime is at the time it occurs. Period. If you are going to accuse someone of a crime you do it in a court of law, under oath, where they can be tried by a jury. Period. Cain is one who is the victim of harassment, not these women, who are all lying.
2) There was no sexual harassment of any kind
3) These women are all being paid by the Obama campaign. Obama has no feasible campaign strategy other than to “go negative, and go early”. Obama has no problem running extremely dirty campaigns. And while he is a terrible President, he is a very good political campaigner. This is only the beginning.
4) This is a deliberate strategy of the Progressive Democrat political machine, who are racists, because they believe they can stir fears of miscegenation, both among white Democrat voters and among black women. Racist and racialist movements are deeply entrenched in the Democratic party; Johnson’s shamelessly overt purchase of black votes in exchange for entitlement programs was a symptom, not a cure, of what has been a core ideology of the Democratic party since the Wilson administration.
5) Getting at all excited about Cain or any of the other Republican candidates is a waste of time and effort. Progressivism has never been and cannot be defeated by democratic means. America’s government is not made up of elected officials and will not change because of any election. America’s government is diseased because the American people are diseased, corrupt, and immoral. Only after we fix ourselves, our families, and our communities – regardless of what the government is doing – will we be able to have the benefit of good government. There is no quick electoral fix: we have the government we deserve. If we want a better government, we need to become people who deserve it. The People are the foundation of the governments in this nation. When the people are good, decent, loving and God-fearing, only then is the foundation stable and strong enough to support a good government. When the foundation is shaky, weak, and falling apart, government naturally sinks into the mire.
6A) Personally, given how well progressives have succeeded in destroying the moral foundations of American culture, I don’t see any way this thing ends except in violence, destruction, and catastrophic civilizational breakdown. It will take a Divine Miracle to save this country. Conservatives are equally complicit in this catastrophe, having consistently focused on meaningless sideshow issues instead of on maintaining the core and divinely-inspired principles on which this nation was founded.
6B) To state one obvious example, the entire “gay marriage” debacle is a meaningless circus side show. To claim that a miniscule part of the of the population is responsible for the decline of the sanctity of marriage and family life is to display quite incredibly obtuse stupidity. Trying to stop homosexual “marriages” from happening is like putting out a teacup to catch the leaks after the entire roof has caved in. It merely distracts us from fixing the real problem. The logical conclusion as that we are a nation of cowards who prefer to hide in the crowd watching the circus side show rather than to acknowledge and address our real problems. (PS – Actual circus side shows are great. Go see one. But they belong at the circus.)

7) This is Valley Forge. Put your boots on. Saddle your horse. Strap on your sword. And then, like General Washington, get down on your knees in the snow. And pray.

You’re too quick to come to Cain’s defense. His story and his behavior since this broke is too shaky to pass the smell test to anyone but his most rabid supporters. Not only that, you’re trying to have it both ways, the women who accused Clinton were all telling the truth but all Cain’s accusers are liars, doesn’t work that way, sorry to break it to you. Occam’s razor is that Cain did it and has a history of doing it, the same as with Clinton. Don’t invest everything in one person when you really don’t know that person.

I have some questions. Do bears shit in the woods when no one sees them shit in the woods? Would 15 year old bear scat count for determining recent bear dumpings? Monica never accused Bill of sexual harassment, so, was it still “sexual harassment?” Was it a hostile working environment in the oval office or was the oval office a nurturing and intimate mentoring experience for Monica when Mr. Bill was president? At what point in time do you think Monica would have changed her mind from being mentored to being exploited? Was she suffering from Stockholm Syndrome? Was she a bimbo? What does that make Mr. Bill, given his rich extensive history predating the dawning of the Age of Viagra?

Only in a case like this could I as a staunch conservative be accused of being a liberal…because I too tend to think Cain has acted inappropriately in the past. He is naturally a gregarious, bigger than life figure…ergo, confidence/ego. That isn’t a vice in and of itself. But he was constantly in situations and places where women were available to pursue…My guess is that alcohol was a booster to his gumption. That happens all the time…

I think Herman Cain enjoyed the benefits his powerful position offered him…and at times, what it didn’t. Its those times that it didn’t that we are hearing about…and I believe what Herman Cain himself said…”More women will likely come forward”….yes…he said that. Why?

Mission accomplished whoever dredged up the NRA “settlements”. Again if the Dems had this then I think they would have waited to go on a witch hunt. There is no proof but since all kinds of unsubstantiated allegations are coming at almost one a day then I guess the damage is done. Cain is already tanking among women, face it most folk are only hearing the thirty second sound bites and don’t know how flimsy the allegations are. For all you supporters of other Republican candidates your turn will come. One thing to consider, apparently Cain was only a pig during the short time he was with the NRA. Has anyone looked closely at SEIU connections with all these “ladies”?

Yeah, there’s Andrew Klavan’s (and others on the Right) defense of “we gotta be tough on Cain, ’cause we’re ‘better’ than they are!” cr*p…there’s enough of the Leftist enablers on the Right (not gonna even TOUCH the establishment twerps on this topic, like Rove, Krauthammer, et al).

All *I* gotta say on this is: to quote from Harold Shukman, the Editor of “Lenin, A New Biography,” written by Dmitri Volkogonov,

“He was made into an icon, a totem of ideological purity and guidance beyond questioning.”

Geez: WE CONSERVATIVES are most decidedly NOT “pure”…but WE KNOW IT; why won’t/can’t these otherwise-supporters please stop trying to confuse high-minded “good intentions” with REALITY?!?

The ONLY solution: WE WIN. THEY LOSE. Or, do they REALLY want to side with “them”?!

Think Alinsky. Fix the target and destroy them. It would explain why all these women seem to be connected to SEIU unions that were part of the National Restaurant Association. Why no accusers from other businesses that Cain was associated with? Or just your random accuser?

I choose to not believe the women. No proof, only gums flapping in the breeze. Just like I now choose to not believe Gloria Allred and her allegations of her past difficulties with men. Until she gives up ALL her medical records. Just one guy’s opinion.

I’m personally fed up with the infighting with the candidates. The Perry/Romney crap has to stop. All of them need to focus on Obama being an epic failure and what they will do to reverse the hell this country is in. If bitching about each other is all they have then they need to go now. I’ve noticed both Cain and Newt have not attacked the other candidates…yet. Are they the adults in the room?

Fantastic article. Ann is very good here. Destroys the argument that “I cant imagine someone from the Democrat side actually going out, trolling for women who are willing to tell lies about Cain.” Yes you can, because things like this have already been done, twice!